GOP – The Musical
by Hart Williams
The country is ruled by people who are good at making money without being good at making things. So, when the Number Two richest man in America sends a mash note to our putative rulers, we must sit up and take notice, if only to calculate when our masters will pour some more kibbles and bits into our bowls. The bell is ringing:
Warren E. Buffett in the New York Times, yesterday [emphasis added]:
… Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic — and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.
I don’t know precisely how you orchestrated these. But I did have a pretty good seat as events unfolded, and I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled….
Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.
Notice anything, anyBODY spectacularly … missing?
Yes, President Barack Obama.
And you might not recognize “Sheila Bair.” Don’t worry about it. It’s above your pay grade. But, just in case, Wikipedia tells us:
Sheila Colleen Bair (born April 3, 1954) is the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). She was appointed to the post for a five-year term on June 26, 2006 by George W. Bush. Bair will also serve as a member of the FDIC Board of Directors through July 2013.
[…]
and Research Director, Deputy Counsel and Counsel to Kansas Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (1981 to 1988).
Dole
A mash note from Republican Wall Street TO Republican Wall Street, and to the grandson of old Prescott Bush, East Coast Money, to be sure. Berkshire Hathaway? Glad you asked:
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, NYSE: BRK.B) is a conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, that oversees and manages a number of subsidiary companies. The company averaged an annual growth in book value of 20.3% to its shareholders for the last 44 years, while employing large amounts of capital, and minimal debt. Berkshire Hathaway stock produced a total return of 76% from 2000-2010 versus a negative 11.3% return for the S&P 500.[2]
Warren Buffett is the company’s chairman and CEO. Buffett has used the “float” provided by Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance operations (a policyholder’s money which it holds temporarily until claims are paid out) to finance his investments. In the early part of his career at Berkshire, he focused on long-term investments in publicly quoted stocks, but more recently he has turned to buying whole companies. Berkshire now owns a diverse range of businesses including railroads, candy production, retail, home furnishings, encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, jewelry sales; newspaper publishing; manufacture and distribution of uniforms; as well as several regional electric and gas utilities.
And, in the pages of the New York Times, the rich old white bastard from Omaha bitch-slaps the President of the United States of America. Nobody notices.
Warren E. Buffett
Warren E. Buffett / New York Times: Pretty Good for Government Work
–Discussion:
Stuart Shapiro / Alan Colmes’ Liberaland: Buffet Says Thank You To Uncle Sam
Ezra Klein: Buffet: ‘Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered.’
Ray Rahman / Mediaite: Warren Buffett Thanks Uncle Sam For Bailout In New York Times
Barry Ritholtz / The Big Picture: Dear Uncle Sucker . . .
Felix Salmon: Bailout economics — It’s all about the bailouts today …
Nitasha Tiku / New York Magazine: Warren Buffett Is Pretty Smitten With the Government
Torrey / ChattahBox News Blog: Warren Buffett Offers Thanks to Federal Government for Bailouts
Mediaite’s Ray Rahman hilariously completely misses it:
Buffet sheds the Uncle Sam metaphor for a bit and praises, in a bipartisan fashion, the individuals responsible for preventing an economic depression
“Bipartisan”?
- Ben Bernanke? Chairman of the Fed, appointed by GW Bush
- Tim Geithner? “In October 2003 at age 42, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” Wikipedia further notes:
In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns.; In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy.
- Henry Paulson? Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.
- Sheila Bair? See above.
Because the “good old boys” took care of it, old man. Nobody notices. But Barry Ritholtz comes close:
I suddenly recalled who it was who allowed the banks to run wild in the first place: You. Your behavior before, during and after the crisis was the epitome of a corrupt and irresponsible government. You rewarded incompetency, created moral hazard, punished the prudent, and engaged in the single biggest transfer of wealth from the citizenry of the United States to the Wall Street insiders who created the mess in the first place…. (read the rest. It’s good, with the caveat that Mr. Ritholtz and I hold certain diametrically opposed views.)
I guess nobody cares about that. Not that the Republican leadership just suddenly “postponed” a scheduled meeting with the President because of “scheduling conflicts.” I guess you can put the “boy” in the White House, but the White House doesn’t make him any less a “boy.” To the SOUTHERN dominated “Party of Lincoln,” at least.
What a goddamned joke.
Frankly, I spent most of yesterday too pissed off to write, or even speak.
As the bubble-headed happy news people yawped pleasantly. Woof! woof! they yipped.
Woof! woof! indeed.
America isn’t interested in facts or reason: America wants DRAMA! So, here’s some entertainment, rather than any analysis:
The Grand Old Party – The Musical
There is a small spotlight in the center of a darkened, almost smoky stage. Gradually, the light increases in intensity to reveal a meadow. But where? When?
Laughing and good-old-boy back-slapping and chatter are heard offstage, as an extremely diminutive man, a “little person” or who would formerly have been a midget, NEWT, enters STAGE LEFT, laughing and clearly a little out of breath:
NEWT: Come on Rich. That’s enough entertainment for tonight.
RICHMAN “RICHIE” RITCHE enters, also STAGE LEFT, also laughing and out of breath. He’s about average-sized.
RICHIE: It never gets old.
NEWT: No. I love it so. It’s the biggest reason that I come on these retreat weekends.
RICHIE: I’m always amazed that no reporters have ever snuck in.
NEWT: Hah! You think they’d try to get in here? Even if they COULD figure it out, we contracted Blackwater to handle security.
RICHIE: Xe.
NEWT: Ze what?
RICHIE: They aren’t Blackwater anymore. They’re called “Xe.”
NEWT: Oh hell, I forgot. Who can keep track of all the names? Who are we meeting as this time?
RICHIE: The Patriotic American Coalition of Concerned Citizens.
NEWT: I don’t think that’s it. That was last time. The puppy drowning championships.
RICHIE: You’re right. Wait a minute. Isn’t this the Coalition of Patriotic Taxpayers against Fraudulent Waste and Abuse?
NEWT: No. That was the Jackson Hole, Wyoming weekend.
RICHIE: I’ve got it! The Taxpayers Coalition of Patriotic Americans!
NEWT: That was the one in Aspen, Colorado.
RICHIE: The Coalition of Patriotic Taxpayers?
NEWT: That was the one at Mammoth Lakes, California.
RICHIE: Oh, I have it: This is the Patriotic Coalition of American Taxpayers Against Waste, Fraud and Abuse.
NEWT: That’s it.
Music swells, as we cue the first show tune:
NEWT:
There’s a kind of insousance, a sweet little license to do whatever we may;
So tenderly yearning, so filled with a burning to play for whatever we pay.
But when drowning kittens and spike-filled mittens to hippies’ heads comes to bore:
We’re just only feeling the sweetness of stealing and knowing we’ll always want more …
NEWT and RICHIE:
It’s so great to be in the GOP
We’re capitalists to the core
Whenever we look at the GNP
It’s always appealing, there’s never a ceiling, the Dow Jones is reeling
but
There’s always whole lot of more and more and more and more and MORE ….
REPUBLICAN CHORUS ENTERS STAGE RIGHT, singing:
We call it retreating but really we’re meeting to tote up and settle the score;
The goats we’re molesting and parties gab-festing are just for some fun nothing more.
The real entertaining is just what’s remaining as we divvy up the whole world;
And every proud people will see on their steeple our banner proudly unfurled.
CAST (with choreography):
It’s so great to be in the GOP
We’re capitalists to the core
Whenever we look at the GNP
It’s always appealing, there’s never a ceiling, the Dow Jones is reeling
but
There’s always whole lot of more and more and more and more and MORE ….
NEWT addresses a corpulent, florid faced man, MUSHBO MIMNAUGH, who pants with exertion from the singing and dancing.
NEWT: I thought you were still at the kitten-drowning pool, Mushbo.
MUSHBO: Naw. Kept dipping my cigar in the water and these Havana beauties don’t come cheap …
And so forth.
Courage.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross posted from his blog.